The Gift of Man & Christ

This year Baylor University, Concordia University, and Yale University hosted
conferences on intelligent design, a topic of interest to popular audiences
as well as scientists. The question being debated—with many permutations
and side issues inevitably involved—is whether the nature and structure
of the material universe and the life discernible therein to the empirical eye
of science show evidence of being designed by an intelligent agent or arose
simply by chance.

I attended all the conferences and listened to the lectures and debates on
the pros and the cons of Darwinism and intelligent design. After days of debate,
after looking at details of micro- and macro-evolution, DNA structure, genetic
coding, probability statistics, cosmological constants, multiple universe schemes,
and a little bit of quantum physics thrown in, the details can overwhelm the
non-scientist (Touchstone editors included).

Still, the best presenters worked to make the information, as well as their
conclusions, accessible to laymen. Opponents and proponents of Darwinism alike
have written books aimed at a popular audience. And publishers understand the
popularity of the topic. Of all the subjects Touchstone has
dealt with, none has drawn as much attention as intelligent design (nor sold
as many copies). There seems to be an insatiable appetite for the controversy.
Why is this?

I believe it is because Christians instinctively know that much more is at
stake here than the fate of a particular late nineteenth-century theory about
the origins of life. It is easy to lose sight of this when one only looks at
the science. But when the din of the dispute about evolution has died down and
the temptation to refute certain scientific arguments has lost its immediacy
and one simply and quietly can reflect on his own existence, as I recently did
after several days of science, a simple question emerges: Is life a gift? More
to the point, is my life a gift?

When I ask this question of myself, a major change of mental scenery takes
place; detailed images of physical objects and their internal operations fade
like phantoms in the clear light of a question that honest men know they cannot
simply shrug off. Sometimes when I pose this question to Christians who have
just come fresh from the fields of scientific debate, it stops them dead in
their tracks. It is a fundamental question, the answer to which separates the
religious believer from the unbeliever.

From this answer arises one’s basic attitude toward life. To answer
“yes” to this question is to become oriented toward a great mystery;
for if life is a gift, there is a Giver. Still, one may then either ignore the
gift and take life for granted or be thankful for it.

The question of whether life (or our cosmos for that matter) arose by the
will of God or simply by chance is not merely a philosophical question. It is
also a cultural question. For a culture that views life as a gift will be very
different from one that views life otherwise. The fundamental divide is obvious
in the widening gap between the culture of life and the culture of death. The
former embraces protection of children in the womb and deeply values the procreative
nature of the family as reflected in the marriage bond of the man and woman—it
is a culture that loves children and welcomes them as gifts. Since children
are gifts from God, they are not to be treated as mere conglomerations of biological
materials that happened to come together.

This relates to another question that is at stake in the debate between materialists
and believers. If man is a great cosmic accident, then just who or what is the
particular man who is called Jesus Christ? A human being who arose from the
material of the universe through random mutations and natural selection—like
the rest of us? Just by chance?

Or, on the other hand, did Christ come in the fullness of time, and was his
mother Mary chosen by God to bear him? Is he the incarnate Son of God or an
accident?

The question of the nature of Man is ultimately a christological question:
“What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” For the Christian,
the resounding answer is, “Jesus is Lord.” He is the Son of God,
the Savior.

Just as the question about life as a gift separates the religious believer
from the secular materialist, so the question about who Jesus Christ is separates
the Christian from not only other religious believers but also from many who
claim to be Christians today.

For the name of Jesus Christ is bandied about in churches by those who no
longer mean what the Church has always meant. It has simply become a phrase
with connotations that vary depending on one’s view of Christ: the great
pacifist, the liberator, the messiah, the moral teacher, the revolutionary,
the mystic, my best pal, or what have you.

But there is no room in the churches for compromise here. There can be no
hesitation in confessing along with St. Peter, “Thou art the Christ, the
Son of the living God!” There is a great gulf fixed between those who
believe and confess that the eternal Word of God “became flesh and dwelt
among us” and that “we have seen his glory, as of the only-begotten
Son, in the bosom of the Father,” and those who deny this.

We confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who for our sake and for our
salvation was made man, conceived of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. This
is the Gift of God that we celebrate in the Christmas services of the churches
and confess in the Creed. This is non-negotiable. Theologians and clergy employed
by the churches have a responsibility to uncompromisingly proclaim this truth.
Those who do not are unfaithful and need to be removed from their teaching offices.

That God became man reveals to us what man is in the cosmos. He is not lost
in the cosmos, an insignificant outcropping of sentient biological matter on
a tiny planet in an accidental universe. Each life is a gift, spoiled by sin
but rescued from damnation by the Gift of God’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
To suggest that each life that Jesus came to save has no ultimate meaning is
to suggest that the blood he shed for our redemption is of no consequence. This
is sacrilegious.

There is no room for confusion about the sacredness and value of all human
life. Innocent human life may not be taken. Christians from the earliest times
have not countenanced abortion. This is not a matter for discussion, for Christians
do not kill babies or support those who do. It is unthinkable.

While science helpfully may show us some of the inner workings of matter and
human beings, Christians believe both that man’s life is a gift from God
and that Christ is God’s gift of himself to man.

And we need no longer speculate or wonder about the nature of the Intelligent
Designer. For we have met him and seen him. He not only made man, but also became
man, and we have seen his face, full of grace and truth. And
when the angels of God knew that his sacred face had appeared as the defenseless
and innocent Child of Bethlehem, they sang, “Glory to God in the Highest!”
And so must we, ever and always, if we are to know our place in the cosmos.

“The Gift of Man & Christ” first appeared in the December 2000 issue of Touchstone. If you enjoyed this article, you'll find more of the same in every issue.

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